Conventionally, the reproduction of documents occurs using one of two methods. In the first method, a document is copied on a stand-alone office copier which makes a duplicate image of the original document and prints out a copy. The second method commonly employed today is to scan a document and then print out an image of the scanned document. The scanners may be connected to a computer system hooked up to a printer, or may be part of a multi-function electronic device which has both scanning and printing capabilities.
Both of the conventional methods of reproducing documents, the stand-alone copier and the scanner, suffer from the same drawback. Both methods employ a document reproduction surface as part of the copier or scanner. The document reproduction surface is a fixed size. On stand-alone copiers, this fixed size is generally 11″×17″. The same limitations apply to scanners, there is only a fixed surface on which to scan the document. In other words, some documents are simply too big for the available document reproduction surface. Those documents which exceed the document reproduction surface are only partially copied. These types of documents are referred to as oversize documents.